The field of the disclosure relates generally to a geographically distributed network, and more specifically, to controlling storage and transmission of data within the geographically distributed network.
A geographically distributed network includes a plurality of devices and facilitates communication between those devices. An example of a geographically distributed network is a free-space optical communications network. Light travels in straight lines, requiring point-to-point architectures. For communications systems, straight optical lines, referred to as enabled lines of sight geometries, may be rare. Fiber optics allow light to be transmitted along various geometric paths. Fiber optics also provide a high communications bandwidth.
Fiber optics can not be used in some applications, for example, communication to and from an aircraft. Other types of wireless communications, for example communications in the microwave or RF frequencies, have longer wavelengths that cause the beam to diffract and spread faster as they propagate than optical communications. However, the longer wavelengths have carrier frequencies orders of magnitude lower than optical wavelengths. As a result, they have intrinsically slower data rates.
Sensors may be included within unmanned air vehicles (UAV) and used to collect data while the UAV is airborne. Raw data is considered to be any data output by a sensor before any processing is performed on the data. Typically, the data collected by the sensors is stored in a memory device also included within the UAV. When the UAV lands, the data is removed from the UAV by either coupling a computer to the UAV and removing the data, or by physically removing the memory device from the UAV and accessing the data stored in the memory device using known methods at a separate location. Typically, the data stored in the memory device is not accessible to an end user for, at best, several days after the data was acquired by the sensors. Other known systems transmit all data collected by the sensors to a ground facility. Such systems have limitations on the amount of data the sensors are allowed to collect so as not to exceed the bandwidth of the communication channels between the UAV and the ground facility. The bandwidth required to transmit the large capacity of data that may be generated by the sensors limits wireless transmission of the data to ground devices. This causes a delay between when the data is acquired and when the data can be analyzed or used.